News

In the face of climate change, many developing countries need better technology to help them predict crop yields to ensure secure sources of food. The Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth offers a solution with "wall-to-wall" measurements of agronomic and climatic conditions - all made available through its CropWatch web service. The scientist who runs it, Bingfang Wu, visited the UN's Commission on Science and Technology for Development, convened by UNCTAD in Geneva, Switzerland on 23-25 January, to discuss what the service has to offer.

Who governs the Internet? To answer this contentious yet monumental question, member States of the United Nations have set in motion the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation, whose deliberations are organized by UNCTAD. This anonymous-sounding body is listening to important voices from governments, international organizations, civil society, academia and the private sector, all of whom have stake in the future of the information age. Its chair, Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca, Director, Department of Scientific and Technological Themes, Ministry of External Relations of Brazil, spoke about the Working Group's most recent meeting which wrapped on 27 January in Geneva.

Policy makers can be a bridge between people who are passionate about ideas and a place where those ideas can be implemented, says Ticora Jones, whose work links up universities and local communities looking to technology to address development challenges. Ms. Jones was speaking at the UN's Commission on Science and Technology for Development, convened by UNCTAD in Geneva, Switzerland, on 23-25 January.

It is becoming clearer that tackling urgent development challenges like access to affordable homes and clean water requires mixing and matching traditional and non-traditional sources of innovation and investment. UVI Research and Technology Park Executive Director Gillian Marcelle, whose varied career spans academia, commerce and development agencies, visited the UN's Commission on Science and Technology for Development, convened by UNCTAD on 23-25 January, to spell out how she sees the way forward.

What does innovation have to do with reducing poverty? Participants at a meeting of the UN's Commission on Science and Technology for Development, convened by UNCTAD, on 23-25 January heard many answers, among them the concept of frugal or jugaad innovation. But what is that? One of its foremost proponents Jaideep Prabhu, co-author with Navi Radjou of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth, explained.